Hotels near The Cinema Museum, Kennington

The Cinema Museum occupies the former administration block of the Lambeth Workhouse at 2 Dugard Way, off Renfrew Road in Kennington. Charlie Chaplin was admitted to that workhouse as a child in 1896, when his mother could no longer keep the family together. Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries founded the museum out of their own collection in 1986 and moved it into this building in 1998, where the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust remains the freeholder.

The holdings are the reason to make the trip: every gauge of film projector ever manufactured, art deco cinema seats, ushers' uniforms from the 1940s and 1950s, an estimated one million photographs and around 17 million feet of film, including Mitchell and Kenyon footage shot between 1899 and 1906. This is not a walk-in museum. Admission is by pre-booked guided tour only, tours run about two hours including roughly thirty minutes of short films, and they cost £15 for adults and £12 concession, with carers free.

Sitting 2.2 kilometres from Charing Cross and entirely outside the festival programme, this is the one entry on the list where the second week of October feels like any other week of the year. Book before you leave home, because there are no drop-in hours and the tour schedule is thin. Three resident cats, Garbo, Marble and Jimmy, run the building.

Pro Tip: Reserve a tour slot at cinemamuseum.org.uk at least a fortnight before you travel, and travel to Elephant & Castle rather than Kennington. It is a ten-minute walk from Elephant & Castle and the route is far easier to follow.